The Soonish Save-the-Future Kit

When I started reporting for Soonish four years ago, I never intended to make a podcast about politics. I just wanted to make a show about the future, and how part of being a smart citizen and a smart consumer is being more conscious about the ways we use technology.

But then the election of 2016 turned everything upside down. And as the Trump years have rumbled onward, I’ve often found myself gravitating toward stories that are sorta about technology but are really about how American democracy works—or doesn’t work. And in Season 4, I’ve gone all the way, bringing you a series of conversations with futurists, legal scholars, and political scientists focused on ways to understand and confront current threats to our democratic norms and our system of government. In particular, I’ve concentrated on the danger represented by Donald Trump and his movement. Think of it as “political futurism.”

Here in the Soonish Save-the-Future Kit I’m curating links to resources that can help you be a more informed and prepared citizen as we once again dive into a perilous and consequential election. If you scroll down, you’ll also find all lf our political-futurism episodes, arranged in into a kind of playlist.

Photo by Koshu Kunii

Guides to Organizing, Protest, and Direct Action

• Hold The Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy — an indispensable collection from a group of researchers and activists offering “a four-step process to start an election protection group in your community, and begin planning potential actions to protect democracy.”

• What’s the game plan if Trump really does try to steal the election? 7 tactics to stop a coup - Daniel Hunter of Choose Democracy lays out seven options, from petitions to direct actions to strikes, designed to dissuade officials from going along with a GOP attempt to ignore election results

• The Count — A practical, step-by-step guide for defending the Constitution, organized according to the key dates in the election process. Authored by three organizers from the Real Justice PAC.

• Choose Democracy Action Center — prompts and starting points for “actions to prevent a coup or stop one that starts.”

• Protect The Results Event Host Toolkit | Social Media Toolkit | Key Dates and Definitions

• Ten Things You Need To Know to Stop A Coup from ChooseDemocracy.us

Progressive Groups Planning Post-Election Mobilizations or Offering Organizing Tactics

• Protect the Results — sign up to receive action alerts if Trump refuses to accept the election results. A collaboration between Indivisible and Stand Up America.

• Black Lives Matter Toolkits — BLM organizers have assembled a powerful collection of resources on healing justice and conflict resolution.

• WagingNonviolence.org— An independent media site covering nonviolence social movements around the world.

• Beautiful Trouble — “A book, web toolbox and international network of artist-activist trainers whose mission is to make grassroots movements more creative and more effective.”

• BlackOUT Collective — A “liberation lab” that helps other organizations build capacity for nonviolent direct action campaigns.

• Getting from November to January — six strategies from the Berggruen Institute’s program director, Nils Gilman.

Background Essays and FAQs

• American Reckoning, The Essay — a magazine-style version of the full American Reckoning podcast series, loaded up with links to my sources and other resources.

• American Mythology — a like-minded four-part special series about the rise of Donald Trump from Intercepted, The Intercept’s weekly podcast

• Electoral College FAQs — A project by Harvard Law School students that assembles “extensive resources for you to explore the intricacies of the process by which the Electoral College — or Congress — will select the next President.”

• Democracy At Risk: An Open Letter to the American Public — signed by three dozen scholars of democracy and autocracy

• How To Keep The Lights On in Democracies: A Open Letter of Concern by Scholars of Authoritarianism — an even larger group of scholars warns that democracy "seems to be withering or in full-scale collapse globally”

• Democracy Wire Voting & Elections feed — browse daily dispatches on efforts to protect and strengthen our election system, assembled by the non-profit group Common Cause.

• Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election — a sobering set of Election Day (Election Week? Election Month?) scenarios from the bipartisan Transition Integrity Project.

• How to Stay Safe While Protesting During a Pandemic — Consumer Reports brings you tips on reducing your risk while doing your civic duty.

Mainstream Media Coverage

• How Trump Could Attempt a Coup — Barton Gellman at The Atlantic offers looks at the Biden campaign’s preparations for a Republican assault on the integrity of the election

• Get ready to protest like democracy depends on it — A Boston Globe Ideas essay from Robert Blair and Steven Rosenzweig, co-authors of the Democracy At Risk open letter

• What Will Trump Do After Election Day? — A New York Times news analysis from veteran political journalist Ron Suskind

• What Can You Do If Trump Stages a Coup? — Lizzie Widdicombe from The New Yorker talks with nonviolence researcher George Lakey

• Is Your State at Risk of an Election Meltdown? — find out whether your state is prepared for November in this New York Times graphical feature.

• What Happens if Trump Won’t Step Down? — Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick speaks with national security expert Josh Geltzer.

• What Happens if Trump Fights the Election Results? — a thorough, historically grounded essay from The New Yorker’s Eric Lach.

• What Will You Do If Trump Doesn’t Leave? — a thoughtful essay by David Brooks that argues for a nonviolent resolution to the conflict likely to engulf the country in the days after November 3.

Books

• The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover — A collection of stories from The Atlantic magazine chronicling democracy’s decline under Trump.

• Why Civil Resistance Works — Researchers Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan explain why nonviolent resistance is more effective in bringing about lasting change than violent insurgency.

• Why We’re Polarized — Ezra Klein’s deep look at the history and social science of the partisan split in America.

Podcasts

• A Bleak ‘What If’: Is the US Headed Towards a Second Civil War? — an eye-opening episode of WBUR’s Endless Thread

• It Could Happen Here — Journalist Robert Evans presents a speculative yet realistic and informed podcast about how America could stumble into a second civil war.

Miscellaneous Resources

• The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — a plan that could put an end to the anti-democratic madness that is the Electoral College. Urge your state representatives to sign on!

• Hic sunt dracones — A provocative piece by blogger Adam Elkus about the “omnicrisis” and why those in power seem happy to let it…drag on. (See what I did there?)

Episode 1.10: Washington, We Have a Problem

What happens when the checks and balances in our constitutional system aren’t checking and balancing? This episode looks at the first year of the Trump presidency using a metaphor from space exploration: gimbal lock.

Episode 2.01: Shadows of August

Just days after the white-nationalist violence in Charlottesville, I road-tripped to southern Illinois to witness the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. took my recording gear along, and—during a stop to see the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg—became an unwitting participant in a Confederate role-playing exercise. I also visited the mostly African-American hamlet of Future City, Illinois, and learned how it had its future taken away decades ago.

Episode 3.03: A Future Without Facebook

The biggest threat to our democracy comes from two men: Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook isn’t going away, but as individuals, we can choose to disengage from the service and its toxic stew of misinformation and disinformation—all circulated by algorithms deliberately designed to exploit our worst impulses.

Episode 3.08: Election Dreams and Nightmares

In this Halloween 2019 episode, I looked at the scary reality that the technology behind U.S. elections is vulnerable to cyberattacks from within or without. Solutions could range from better “cyber hygeine” to safer new mobile-based electronic voting systems—but Malka Older, a top science-fiction author and election-reform advocate, says none of it will happen without sustained citizen scrutiny.

Episode 4.01: Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible

The coronavirus pandemic, coming on top of all the other stresses and breakdowns of the Trump years, exposed just how frayed and fragile American society’s support systems have become. For this episode I interviewed futurist Jamais Cascio about “BANI,” his intriguing new framework for understanding the uncertainties of life in 2020 and how we might tame them.

Episode 4.02: Unpeaceful Transition of Power

Could Donald Trump lose the election and still hold on to power? The answer is a terrifying yes, if he and his forces can succeed in undermining confidence in mail-in ballots, or if they exploit the flaws, quirks, and holes in the Constitutional process electing the president. Hear an eye-opening conversation with legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, author of Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020.

Episode 4.03: After Trump, What Comes Next?

University of Chicago political scientist Will Howell. co-author of the new book Populism, Presidents, and the Crisis of Democracy, helps us examine the leading explanations for Trump’s rise and competing ideas about ways to move forward after he leaves office.

Episode 4.04: American Reckoning, Part 1: Civil Wars and How to Stop Them

Welcome to a special two-part series about the looming clash over the future of America. In Part 1, we look at the tattered state of our democracy as the election approaches, and we assess nonviolent ways to respond to the twin threats of political polarization and President Trump's thuggish behavior.

Episode 4.05: American Reckoning, Part 2: A New Kind of Nation

In Part 2 of our special series, we look at the work waiting for us after the election: fixing the way we govern ourselves so that we’ll never have another president like Trump or another year like 2020. To reverse toxic polarization, we’ll need reforms that give both parties a fair shot at legislating and lower the risk of tyranny by the minority or the majority—reforms that could go so deep we come out the other side looking like a different nation (or nations).